NASA has held a pumpkin-carving contest for six years now, and it's clear that these rocket scientists know how to have a rollicking good time.
Engineers in the Spacecraft Mechanical Engineering Section and the Payload and Small Spacecraft Mechanical Engineering Section of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory split up into teams to design and plan their pumpkin feat in their off hours using their own money.
On the day of the contest, the teams have exactly one hour to turn their gourds into works of art. When time is up, they move the pumpkins indoors where judges from various labs evaluate.
The winning team doesn't end up with any money, just bragging rights. But having created the most spook-tacular pumpkin of an extremely competitive bunch must be good for some serious swagger in the halls of the NASA office buildings.
All of the videos embedded below are courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech.
